Nor did the British cruisers have things all their own way. Swift-sailing privateers were fitted out—Cape Cod sailors we may be sure eager for such service—and in the two years between 1776 and 1778 nearly eight hundred prizes had been captured; while during the war nearly two hundred thousand tons of British shipping were taken by privateers that were manned largely by fishermen. Certainly, whether of men high in council or of the rank and file, Cape Cod furnished her due share in the conflict: unnamed sailors and soldiers, brave men all; Nathaniel Freeman, Joseph Otis, Dimmock; and, greater than all, the James Otises, father and son. From the evacuation of Boston in 1776 to 1780 when the new government was established, Massachusetts affairs were in the hands of the Council that was elected annually as provided by the charter of William and Mary; of this Council Colonel James Otis, as senior member, was presiding officer and virtually the Governor of the Province. James, the patriot, never entirely recovered from the effects of a dastardly assault in 1769, and in 1783 he was killed by a stroke of lightning as he stood in his doorway at Andover. The last years of his life were dark with tragedy. His daughter, to his great grief, had married an English officer, who was wounded at Bunker Hill; his son, James, third of the name, had enlisted as a midshipman and died, at twenty-one, on the notorious British prison-ship Jersey. But the patriot had accomplished his great work. And of him John Adams well said: “I have been young and now am old, and I solemnly say I have never known a man whose love of country was more ardent and sincere—never one who suffered so much—never one whose services for any ten years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770.” III